Monday, June 16, 2008

A Father's Day Feast

Because of the aforementioned tubing, I bumped up my family's celebration of the patriarchy to Saturday night. After spending the afternoon going through my recipes, I decided on a latin theme and three dishes and a drink I'd never made before. Brilliant! It all turned out really wonderfully though, despite quite a lot of prep work.

Soho Pineapple CaipirinhaBeth helped me find this recipe and it was the perfect compliment to the meal. Also, my dad loves pineapple, so this worked out well. He requested a "special cocktail" with the meal. Mottling pineapple proved difficult without an actual mottler, but everything tasted great. In the future I might blend the pineapple up a bit before mashing.

Crispy Black Bean Cake Salad

You know what I apparently suck at? Frying things. They wind up tasting fine (usually), but never in the shape I intended. Luckily, when the fried thing is being put on top of a salad, you can just go ahead and crumble it up and nobody will be the wiser as far as ugly frying technique goes. When I made the dressing, I had some reservations. It didn't taste great. But when it came together with the greens, the bean cakes, the avacado, the cilantro and the lime juice, it was fantastic. I'd definitely recommend this dish. Recipe here.

Red Snapper Ceviche

This is a pretty standard ceviche recipe — chilies, onions, lime juice, cilantro, tomatoes. Luckily, standard ceviche is really delicious. It's a pretty weird thing for my dad to like (raw fish, onions), but he does! He loves it. I think it's because it's spicy. I added a few sliced chilis in with the lime juice and fish when I marinated it to give it some extra kick, which I think worked out nicely. And the mint garnish (which tasted great by the way, I'd have never thought to put mint on there) is the first thing from my garden I've gotten to actually use this year! Also, serving in a chilled dish as the recipe suggests was a tremendous touch. This was my dad's favorite dish of the evening. Another thing I learned: I also don't know how to properly get bones out of or skin off of fish. I assumed the guys at the H Mart would take care of that for me when I asked for a filet. Most of the bones were gone, but not all. And the skin... wow did I do an ugly job of that. But it all got mixed together in a bowl so it didn't really matter what the pieces of fish looked like. Bonus!

Grilled Pork Chops in Mojo

Again, when I was preparing this dish I thought the sauce might be a little bit underwhelming. The write up made it sound so very delicious, so I was a bit disappointed when I tasted the marinade. But once those flavors got into the meat and caramelized on on the grill — wow! It was really, really excellent. Super simple recipe here.